had been sitting on the altar stone for what felt like hours still holding the bottle of local brandy that Rob had slid across the bar, muttering, ‘On the house, mate…’
One more season was all he’d needed and then, come the next rains, he’d have returned to London and published his findings in the academic journals. Written a book that would never have made the bestseller list. There was nothing here sensational enough for that. No treasure. No startling revelations.
He wasn’t interested in sensationalism, bestseller lists, anything that would expose him to the glare of celebrity. If he’d wanted them, they could have been his for the asking any time in the last fifteen years.
All he’d wanted was to drop out of sight and lose himself in the work he loved.
He looked down at the bottle in his hand and finally broke the seal.
* * *
For a while Manda remained where she was, perched on her stone, quite content to wait until the rest of her party returned, idly tracing the outline of the half-finished figure with the tip of her finger. It was the head of a bird, she realised, a hawk of some kind, and she glanced up at a sky almost crowded out by the thick canopy of the forest.
When their pitiful little band of tourists—a couple of dozen people who were staying at the same complex, boosted by a group of captive businessmen whose plane had been delayed—had walked up from a clearing where they’d left the bus, she’d noticed a hawk, its wings outstretched and seemingly motionless as it rode the currents of air, quartering the side of the valley in search of prey.
She searched the small patch of sky that was now streaked with pink, but the bird had gone and the forest was wonderfully peaceful. She could no longer hear the tour guide’s sing-song voice pointing out the details they were expected to admire enthusiastically when, in truth, all they’d wanted was to be back at the coast with a very cold drink within easy reach.
She sipped at the bottle of water she carried in her shoulder bag before pouring a small amount on to the hem of her shirt to wipe over her face. Then, wondering how much longer she would have to endure this ‘privilege’, she glanced at her watch.
Three o’clock? Was that all it was?
She frowned. The pink streaks in the sky suggested it was later. She’d reset her watch to local time when she’d landed, but maybe she’d got it wrong; she hadn’t actually been paying much attention to the time.
She stared up at the sky for a moment longer, then at the path taken by her companions. Night fell with stunning rapidity in this part of the world and she listened for any sound that might indicate their imminent return.
There was nothing. The birds had fallen silent, the insects had stopped their apparently ceaseless stridulating as if they, too, were listening.
The absolute quiet that a minute or two earlier had seemed so welcome now seemed strangely eerie, prickling her skin with goose-flesh, setting up the small hairs on the back of her neck at some unseen, unknown danger. A feeling that the earth itself was holding its breath.
‘Wait!’ Her urgent cry seemed pathetically small, smothered by the density of the vegetation and, in a sudden burst of panic at the thought of being left on her own in that ancient, ghost-filled place, she leapt to her feet and, quite oblivious of the heat, began to scramble up the steep path after the others.
‘Wait,’ she cried out again. ‘Wait for me.’
She had covered perhaps twenty yards when she staggered slightly and, stumbling, put her hand to the ground to save herself. She didn’t stop to wonder at such unaccustomed clumsiness, she was in too much of a hurry to catch up with the rest of the party. Then, as she took another step, she lost her balance again and grabbed for a tree as she was overcome with dizziness, staring down at the forest floor, which appeared to be rippling beneath her feet. Puzzled, but not yet alarmed.
Leaves, small pieces of twig and bark began to tumble from the dense canopy high above her and she gave a startled little scream as something hit her shoulder and bounced to the ground. It was a large spider and, for a moment, they stared at one another, both of them confused by the earth’s uncharacteristic behaviour. Then the tree she was clinging to began to shake and Manda forgot all about the spider.
For a moment she hung on, clinging to the thick trunk regardless of the debris raining down on her head and shoulders, unable to concentrate on anything but the absolute necessity of remaining on her feet as the earth shook.
If she could just hold on, it would stop and then she would walk slowly back down the path to the tour bus and wait for the others to return.
Except that it didn’t.
Instead, the shaking grew steadily worse until the ground beneath her felt as if it were surging in great undulating waves and the tree she was clinging on to for dear life lurched sideways as the path split open with a great jagged tear.
For a frozen moment in time Manda hung on, staring down into the thick green forest that carpeted the valley wall rippling beneath her like some storm-tossed sea. Then, as she realised she was about to be tipped into that maelstrom, she let go of the tree and flung herself across the gaping path a split second before the tree, its roots and the ground to which they were attached, fell away like a stone.
She was screaming now. Seriously screaming.
She knew she was screaming because, although she could not hear herself—all she could hear was the crack and roar as the earth split and tore about her—she could feel the harsh vibration in her throat.
Lying where she had thrown herself in her mad leap for safety, her arms wrapped around her head, her eyes tightly closed, she shrieked, ‘Enough! No more, God. Stop it! Please!’
Then the ground beneath her gave way and she, too, was sliding into the abyss.
MANDA had no way of knowing what time it was, or how long she had been lying on cold stone. She was just grateful that the earth had stopped shaking.
After a while, though, she lifted her head, gingerly feeling for damage. Her fingers were stiff, sore as she tried to move them and there was a tender spot at the back of her head. A dull throbbing ache. Nothing that she couldn’t, for the moment, live with, she decided. And she seemed lucid enough.
Lucid enough to know that she had lived through an earthquake and be grateful to have survived.
Lucid enough to know that living through the initial catastrophe might not be enough. She had been alone, separated from her party…
She let her head fall back against the stone and lay still for a moment while she gathered her wits, her strength, knowing that she should move, shout, do something to make herself heard, alert searchers to her presence.
In a moment.
She would do all that in a moment.
It was dark. Pitch-dark. There were no stars, no moon, which suggested dense cloud cover. Was that normal after earthquakes? Tropical rain would be the absolute limit, she thought, as she tried to piece together exactly what had happened.
The earth
